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Contre-ciel is a playful installation part of a series of interactive works by the artist Tatiana Vilela dos Santos, whom she calls the "Rosetta stones". Rosetta stones are playful devices offering a deliberately cryptic grammar of interaction that players are invited to decode by playing. By interacting with the device, spect-actors are invited to observe the links between their actions on the controller and their consequences on a feedback interface. In Contre-ciel, the controller is an electronic piano, and the output devices are a set of stereo speakers and a suspended artificial sky.

The playful grammar of Contre-ciel is based on music theory rules. However, no knowledge in the matter is necessary to grasp the mysterious grammar of the work. These interaction codes are designed to illustrate the natural expressiveness of the play: speed, strength, complexity... Every aspect of the musical play is interpreted by climatic and meteorological variations so that players can simply interact with the device and let themselves be carried away by the synesthetic experience that is offered to them. Careful observation of the modifications thus generated will allow them to understand how to change the celestial mechanics around their planet so as to modify the day-night cycle but also the planet from which the sky is contemplated. The game thus makes it possible to travel in time and space through music. The experience offered by Contre-ciel is part of the demiurge fantasy of time, space and celestial control.

The playful nature of the experience defuses the performative apprehensions induced by the musical instrument. Because Contre-ciel is presented as a game rather than a performance, the work uninhibits players who are reluctant to play the piano in public.

The device is based on the rear projection of a photorealistic sky, generated with video game technologies: skyboxes for the celestial bases, dynamic lights for the stars, systems of particles for weather effects, volumetric clouds... The subtleties of the play that alter this sky are interpreted by a MIDI protocol, analyzed by the computer program developed specifically for the game.

Contre-ciel is a Rosetta stone to explore, a demiurge synesthetic experience, a playful astrophone.